Review: Armageddon
- Article 3 of 3
- Cambridge Insider, August 1998
Jerry Bruckheimer makes stupid films. Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and Con Air all prove this, and now Armageddon comes to bolster the evidence with the finesse of a baseball bat to the head. Following in the relatively intellectual footsteps of Meteor, Armageddon sends a meteorite the size of Texas hurtling towards Earth, ready to destroy us all in an event so Biblical in its proportions, it needed Charlton Heston to explain it. Only drilling specialist Bruce Willis, together with his team of trailer-park pals, has the skills to save the planet. Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, in a role so pointless you can only assume she took it to get close to Bruce Willis, are the nauseating star-crossed lovers who make you wish spaceships had ejector seats.
Filled with dialogue that would make an army recruitment ad seem wimpy in comparison (“I’d like to shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I’ve ever met”), Armageddon’s one notable feature is it is probably the first movie since the fifties whose message is “technology is good: worship technology.”
My advice: if you are going to watch it, smuggle in some alcohol with you to numb the pain.